Friday, October 19, 2007

Manny HR Explained/Contest Update

Okay, I meant to do this last night. But after explaining it to Matty in the comments (which I've reprinted below), I decided to whip up a diagram of Manny's "home run" from last night. Click to enlarge.

"Think of it this way. If you take away that thing behind the wall, so, if it was just a thin, free-standing wall with a yellow line on top, do you think the ball would've bounced over or bounced back? Unless it hit the front corner (which it clearly didn't, it hit the top), it would have to continue in the same direction. ie. over to the other side. I think the ball slammed into the front corner of the hard surface beyond the yellow line (yes, much of the ball was ON the yellow line, that's because the yellow part has give and is soft, while the thing behind it is hard). That area is out of play, meaning if it hits it, it has hit something past the wall and is a home run. You could even hear it when they played it with sound, bashing off of something hard and ricocheting back toward the field. If it just hit the top of a soft wall, A. it would bounce over and B. the velocity of the bounce wouldn't have been so great.

The only possible hole in my theory is when they showed Myers out there, you could see that SOME panels of the fence actually extended up beyond the flat surface beyond it. If it hit the top of one of those and came back, well, fine, it's in play, but there must be some weird, angled thing INSIDE the yellow part that makes it come back when it should go over (again, because it clearly hit the TOP of the wall, and as long as the top of the wall is flat, physics shouldn't allow a ball to do anything else.)"

And I'd like to add that this was my theory from the minute it happened. I was screaming all this as it was going on. I didn't sleep on it and think, "how can I make it seem like a home run?" So, this is my theory and until somebody goes to that spot and can prove it wrong, I'm stickin' to it! In fact, Fox made it look worse by showing the extreme close-up, blurring everything, and saying, "well, look, it's touching yellow." Well, yeah, it's touching a lot of yellow. ON TOP. Unless the ball had come STRAIGHT down on it, it should've gone over. Unless it hit some foreign object like the hard surface beyond the wall.

Contest Update: Funny how Kara and AJM, the top two in last year's quiz standings, are currently sitting 1-2 in this deal. (With their partners, Pweezil and the mysterious Laureen.) Kara/Pweez tacked on to their lead, Jay/Leggett finally get on the board. passing Peter/Ryan, who also scored one, and Novy/Dan make a nice move. Five of my longest readers still have zip. Sad face.

"Fair batted ball that travels over the yellow line on top of the outfield wall (on the fly): HOME RUN."

Jere, my understanding of "over" in the Jake ground rules--and perhaps I am wrong--is that the ball has to clear the yellow line to be a HR; if it hits any part of the line, it is still in play. If that's accurate, it was a good call, albeit a really stupid way to draw the ground rules. Would make much more sense to delineate the vertical part of the wall as in-play and the horizontal top as HR and then paint them contrasting colors. But as written, and as painted, if it hits the yellow, and doesn't go OVER the yellow on top of the wall, it's still a live ball.

As you've drawn it, if it hit all gray and no yellow, it would have been a home run (and gone back into the stands). But if I read you correctly, you're saying it hit both yellow/under and gray/front, and bounced back, and I still read that as not clearing the yellow and hence an in-play ball.

I agree with your diagram in that that's the trajectory that Manny's ball took. However, the question is, is it "enough" for a ball to have hit that corner beyond the yellow line. Or does it need to have cleared the yellow line enough that it's bounce still carries it forward?

But even those standards are ridiculous. Look at your chart. I'm almost 100% positive that had Manny's ball took the trajetory of your red line, resulting in the ball bouncing toward the seats, rather than the field--then it would've been called a homerun. Which is pretty stupid since such a ball would be more shallow than Manny's actual hit (blue line), which of course was ruled a single.

Damnit, those rules are stupid anyway! They could just clear up a lot of confusion and say that any ball that seems to hit anywhere on the horizontal upper surface (causing a ball to bounce up) is a homerun, no matter how much of the yellow part it "catches." It would help if only the *front* of that padding were painted with a yellow line.

And only the balls that hits the vertical front part of that padding (causing it to ricochet in a non-upward way) should still be in play. Sort of like the rules they have regarding the Green Monster.